Electricity is commonly delivered from electricity suppliers to consumers in the form of alternating current (AC) at a certain fundamental frequency, e.g., 60 Hz in the U.S. The consumption of electricity, e.g., three-phase AC, is commonly measured by power meters. It is known that when the load of an power supply system includes non-linear components, the electrical power supply may include harmonic frequencies other than the fundamental frequency. Additionally, when the load is not purely resistive, the waveform of voltage V may lead or lag the waveform of current I in time or have a phase offset in the frequency domain.
Electrical power may include three components: apparent power (Papp), active power (Pact), and reactive power (Preact). The apparent power Papp may be defined as the product of magnitudes of voltage V and current I, i.e., P=V×I. The active power Pact may be defined as the capacity of the load at a particular time or the energy that flows from power source to the load. The reactive power Preactive may be defined as the energy that is bounced back from the load to the source. If the phase offset between current and voltage in frequency is φ, then Pact=Papp*|Cos(φ)| and Preact=Papp*|Sin(φ)|.
When the number of non-linear loads, e.g., switching power supplies, increases, a larger amount of harmonic content may be present in the power system. These harmonics may limit the effectiveness of the power system to deliver electrical power from a source to a load. The combination of digital signal processing (DSP) and high performance analog to digital converters (ADCs) at low prices provides electrical power suppliers with new options for improving and optimizing electrical power meters. The owner suppliers may want to know how much electrical power is delivered not only at the fundamental frequency but also at harmonic frequencies.
Current techniques for computing Pact and Preact at a fundamental frequency are mostly based on Digital Fourier Transform (DFT) and band-pass filters. These methods and devices may suffer longer calculation time. A previous publication “A Simple Harmonic Meter Using Phase Locked Loop” by Matsui et al., Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the IEEE (1998), shows a method of using PLL to detect power of various harmonics in a single voltage signal. The Matsui's method always locks to the carrier of fundament frequency and needs another feedback loop for adjusting the time delay circuit for phase shift. Most importantly, the Matsui's method does not show how to use PLL to compute active and reactive powers, which requires not only the voltage signal and current signal, but also the phase offset between these two signals.